Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1887-09-30


TO a tall desk in one corner of the room,
and unlocking it with key which he
extracted from a metal box, he drew from
the recess of small drawer a second
box-a wooden box of curious Oriental
workmanship-long and rather fat. He
had not looked at it for thirty years.
What made him take it out and open
it tonight lie himself could not ha e
told.
Slowly, and with a strange expression,
he drew out the yellowed contents, and,
sitting before the fire, laid them npon his
knee. Two small bundles of letters. tied
by faded ribbon, emitting the dead,
acrid, musty odor of OBJ ects long 81 II
away from the air and the light, lock
of soft hair, pressed rose--the old, old
tokens How do men of sixty, if they
chance to have preserved any such en-
bodied memories, usually regard them9
With the genial laugh of the philosopher
who has learned the relative value of
things; with half Rabelaisian smile at
the rememberances of that time when the
blood ran warm and the pulse beat fast;
with saddened, senile shake of the head
as the shadows of lost hopes and dreams
pass in dim procession before the dulled
and sluggish vision. But Hugh Letting
well was strange man-owned in his
nature an adamantine fibre that refused
to run into the molds which shape the
| development Of other men. When
he had last locked this box and its
contents out of his sight it had been with
a dark passion of scorn and hatred that
through all the intervening years had
survived, that had wrapped the whole
course of his life and changed him into
the gloomy recluse as which alone the
few friends OF his latter days had known
him. And even now, as his nervous fingers
united the little bundles and the letters
fell dispersed to the floor, the same look
of hatred, the same scorn, hared up in
his deep-set eyes.
Oh, yes; she had been pretty enough,
the creature to whom these letters had
been written She had yellow hair, and
long, swan-like neck, and eyes like
violets under water. And she had looked
as true, as Innocent as aint-like--well,
as that little chit of Stella, whom he
had caught keeping q tryst with the
beardless boy he had turned from his
door month before! And yet there
had seemed in her something stronger
something more vital, too. She had taken
his soul captive; he, the self-centred man
of thirty who had never loved easily, to
whom to love at all was to love change.
lesSly, with that a s0rption and exclusive
ness which is more an than pleasure to
him who feels it. Hugh Leftingwell was
rich man now, but then he was poor
and without standing, without opening,
without prospects, save as he saw them
in his own consciousness of strength, and
rs she professed to see them through her
faith and her love. How steadfast seemed
that faith of hers How sweet-ah me
how sweet had been her love!
That last night he had gone to her
fathers house she was all in white, with
her yellow hair hanging in curls about
her milk.white throat and a rose at her
breast. She had followed him
out when he was going away, out upon
the moon checkered shadow of the porch.
He was to be back in less than month;
no great journey. But the separation be-
fore them both seemed one of intermina-
BILE years. Three weeks had not
passed before he heard that she was to be
married. AS he looked back it occurred
to him that for days he must have been
out of his mind. Fast as steam could
carry him he hurried back. He believed
nothing. She, with her own lips, must
tell him that she had thrown him over.
He forced himself into her presence. He
heard the truth. Even then he doubted
her own faithlessness. Her ia her, he
knew, had never liked him. He be-
sought her, he commanded her, to tell
him that she had been coerced, driven,
compelled into this marriage. She
turned as white as the dead, but she
spoke steadily. No one had compelled
her The man she was about to marry
was rich--very rich.
"And you are marrying him because he
is richl"
She looked up at him.
eyes,
He laughed. He turned and left the
house.
A few weeks later she was married.
She only lived year. Two days after
her death the box was brought to him by
an old family servant whom she had
! trusted. "TheY was her last words to
bring it." said the woman. Hugh LET.
fingwell opened it. 1t contained what
he had expected letters to the girl
he had loved, and more, lock of her
hair and rose-the rose she had worn in
her breast the night they parted before
he went on his journey. The touch of
these objects had burned his fingers.
He started up now from his sitting
posture, and the box, which had lain on
his knees, rolled off and struck the brass
andiron of the fireplace before it fell
against the tiles and near the red embers
of the logs. With an instructive motion,
: Hugh Leffiingwell stopped and rescued
it from its threatening doom. AS he took
it up it seemed to him that something
ratified. He looked at the box more
closely. He saw that it had false bot
tom, which, sliding out through the
force of the conclusion, revealed folded
paper within. The most cursory exam.
ination of the interior of the box would
have made its mechanism patent to the
eye. But Hugh Leffingwell, on that day
thirty years ago when he had received it
had crushed its contents back with q
feverish hand and thrust it out of sigh
without second glance, to remain un
destroyed, but ever unopened till he him,
self should pass beyond.
He drew the paper from its long
hiding place with hand that had
grown suddenly unsteady So fain
were the time-dimmed characters, writ
ten as in the feeble hand of one In grea
straits of illness, and so blurred had the
old mans eyes become that he had tc
take the letter nearer to the light, anG
then pause moment.